Prisons have been used as the setting in films for almost as long as cinema has existed. With its roots going back to the silent filmExecution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison, which was released in 1901, prisons have played vital roles in countless of the most iconic films in history.Shawshank RedemptionandTheGreen Mileare two of the best examples of films that took their respective settings behind bars and transformed them into characters of their own. Unsurprisingly, the crime genre utilizes the setting more than any other.
Withso many films to choose from, it’s incredibly easy to miss some of the best movies that offers poignant depictions of life behind bars. While many prison films tell fictional stories, it’s the real-life stories that tend to offer the most authentic stories.A Prayer Before Dawnis one of these films, which was released in cinemas in 2018 courtesy of A24. Unfortunately, the independent film didn’t manage to break into the mainstream in a wat it deserved due to its R-rating and limited theatrical release, but it represents everything a prison film should be.
What Is ‘A Prayer Before Dawn’ About?
Based on his autobiography titledA Prayer Before Dawn: My Nightmare in Thailand’s Prisons, A Prayer Before Dawntells the real-life story of Billy Moore, a promising boxer from Liverpoolwho became heavily involved in crime. In a bid to escape and turn his life around for the better, Moore moved to Thailand to pursue a career as a stuntman while continuing to become a boxer. However, as he began to land more fights within the Muay Thai scene, Moore fell back into a life of crime. Eventually,he was arrested in Thailand for a drug-related offense, putting him behind bars in a country with notoriously harsh prison conditions. As soon as he starts his sentence, he realizes how harsh his immediate future will be. Moving forward,the suspense never lets off, making for one of the most harrowing yet enthralling films of the year.
As you’d expect, life in a Thai prison is a massive shock to the system for Moore, despite his previous experience with incredibly volatile people. Extreme gang violence towards other inmates is rife, something which we see in disturbing detail often throughout the film. While these scenes can be hard to watch at times, they are some of the most crucial in depicting the brutality of prison life and setting the film apart from many others in the genre. In a bid to escape the violence as much as possible, Moore takes his boxing skills and joins the prison’s Muay Thai gym. “I need to fight…” Moore tells the organizers of the gym in the film, seeing this as a potential way out of a place no one would ever want to step foot in. As the film progresses,we watch Moore go through nothing short of a transformation through his boxing; however, the film doesn’t forget about the core fundamentals of showing the horrors that he and so many other inmates had to go through in one of Thailand’s toughest prisons.
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The Robert Bresson classic demonstrates the intense procedure of a prison break.
‘A Prayer Before Dawn’ Highlights the Power of Immersion and Realism
When telling a story so intense and pivotal in the real life of the main character, striving for realism would have to be the top priority. Luckily, this is exactly what directorJean-Stéphane Sauvairecared so deeply about. Whenspeaking to DeadlineaboutA Prayer Before Dawn, he said, “For me, it was important to be realistic. I like mixing the documentary style with fiction so I really wanted to shoot in the prison with former prisoners,”. The filmis predominately set in Klong Prem prison, but the production crew was denied access to the prison for filming due to it still being in use. To work around this and still remain authentic, the film was shot in Nakhon Pathon prison, which acts as a museum rather than a functioning facility. Alongside filming inside an actual Thai prison,the decision to cast ex-prisoners provides an unmatched level of realism, taking another huge step in making the audience feel like they’re inside the prison with Moore.
Beyond the setting and characters in the prison drama, the cinematography for the film was also engineered to make you feel like you’re actually there experiencing what Moore went through. The director of photography,David Ungaro, spoke withNo Film School, where he detailed the techniques he used to achieve such a visceral final image for the film. “When they punch, they can always see me. When they fall, if they fall in the wrong spot, they’re going to hit the camera. I was like a dancer — I had to learn the moves.” he said. For the scenes where Moore is experiencing the wildly intense atmosphere created by his fellow inmates, Urango said “The key word was immersion. We wanted to be with the character, seeing the sweat, seeing the fear.” Many other prison films are successful in showing that prison life isn’t something to be glamorized, butthe lengths thatA Prayer Before Dawngoes to in depicting how close life and death are behind bars truly set it apart within the genre, setting the standard for how these films should make us feel once the credits roll.
A Prayer Before Dawn
